In living color: Ars reviews the hacker-approved Philips Hue LEDs

Pricey but lovable bulbs leave us incapable of going back to normal lighting.

Philips LED-powered Hue lights are awesome. Even after a couple of weeks of almost non-stop fiddling, the programmable multicolored bulbs continue to surprise me, though probably not in the ways that Philips originally intended. It's taken an alarmingly short amount of time for me to grow to consider them an indispensable component of my home office. I'm even starting to incorporate them around the rest of the house too. Being able to control the color, brightness, and timing of your lights from your phone or computer—and tying the lights together with your own on/off schedule—is addictive.

The kit

The fancy wirelessly controlled devices launched just before Halloween this year and are currently sold only at Apple Stores. They're available as both individual bulbs and in a three-bulb starter kit. The starter kit also contains the wireless bridge you need in order to actually use the lights as anything other than plain old on-off lights. The starter kit retails for an unfortunately steep $199.95; the individual lights are $59.99 apiece.

The starter kit, pictured above, features a picture of a Hue bulb on the front backed by a color wheel, which you can slide around to make the bulb change colors. It's a neat way to show the functionality of what's inside.

Enlarge/ This is what's in the box: three Hue bulbs, a bridge, an AC adapter, and a length of cat 5 cable.

Lee Hutchinson

Inside the starter kit are three Hue bulbs, the wireless bridge that runs them, an AC power adapter, and a short length of cat 5 cable for connecting the bridge to a network switch. The bulbs themselves have US-standard E26 screw fittings. They draw 8.5 watts each at peak power, putting out 600 lumens (roughly the same amount of light as a 50-watt incandescent bulb). They're rated for 15,000 hours of continuous use, which at eight hours a day should get you upwards of five years of fun colors.

The lights are wirelessly controlled by a central bridge using Zigbee Light Link, and the starter kit's lights are preconfigured to work automatically with the included bridge. A single bridge can control up to fifty bulbs. Reprogramming the starter kit lights to work with another bridge is difficult and requires some extra hardware. Philips clearly wants you to purchase a starter kit and then expand your Hue collection by buying individual bulbs rather than multiple starter kits.

Enlarge/ The Hue bridge, with all status lights on. The central ring illuminates the button used for linking the hub to the Hue app or other things.

Lee Hutchinson

The hookup

Setting up the kit was easy. The included instructions are minimal: plug the bridge in to power and network, screw in your lights and turn them on, then download and install the iOS or Android Hue app to your smartphone or tablet. The Hue app links with the bridge over your LAN. You are then able to transform your room into a soothing tone-appropriate workspace, an artfully lit scene echoing the colors of a cherished photograph, or a nightmare clown funhouse.

The app only works via Wi-Fi with your LAN by default. If you want to use it to control your lights while you're away, you'll need to link your Hue system to Philips Web portal. This is quickly done via the Web portal itself, and thereafter the app will function from anywhere.

The app

Philips clearly took a non-geek approach to the app—rather than immediately exposing a color wheel and other controls, the app on launch presents a set of "scenes." These are pictures provided by Philips (you can add your own pictures as well, or snap some with your phone's camera). The scenes provided by Philips are all colorful, and when you tap each of them, your Hue lights shift to display colors from that scene. This is the primary way you'll be interacting with the app—scenes are preset color bookmarks for some or all of your lights. The ones Philips includes in the app give you a broad range of different colors to choose from. You can also customize them or create your own.

Picking colors for your individual Hue lights from a scene.

Lee Hutchinson

The lights are assigned colors from the scene. When editing a scene, each light is represented by a drop-pin with that light's number on it. As you move each light's drop-pin around the image, the color of that point in the image is faithfully reproduced by the bulb. The color fidelity is good across most of the spectrum—browns are difficult to do, and greens aren't as deep as I'd like, but blues and reds are eye-wateringly rich.

A sampling of some of the colors the Hue bulbs can produce.

Lee Hutchinson

Philips claims the idea behind letting you use photographs to determine the bulbs' colors rather than just giving you a bare color wheel is to let you tie in your room lighting with memories of your favorite photographs. Did you have an amazing outdoor sunset wedding? Stick a picture of it into the app and your Hue lights will glow with orange-gold sunset tones and the dark blue of the evening sky. Got pictures of yourself hanging from that one amazing pitch you climbed at E-Rock last summer? Your Hue lights can pick out the greens and grays and blues and try to recreate the mood.

The default page of the Hue app, showing some of the scenes which can be used to color the Hue lights. The app comes preconfigured with two pages of scenes.

Lee Hutchinson

In addition to the photograph-based scenes, there are also four "recipes" in the app's scene list. Rather than being based on photos, the "recipes" are specific hues of light which Philips says will complement or enhance specific states of mind. The "Relax" recipe bathes the room in dim golds, and "Concentrate" produces clear, almost sunlight-hued light. "Energize" sends the room into stark white with a hint of blue, and "Reading" looks a lot like standard yellow incandescent light. Philips has some pseudoscientific justification about how each setting alters your brain patterns or some such, but the recipes serve a far more important function: they are the only way to single-tap your lights into a uniform uncolored state. All of the other pre-made scenes involve some amount of non-neutral colors.

Fortunately, you aren't limited to using scenes to customize your lights—more granular controls are available. At the bottom of the scene selection page is a drag handle, which you can slide upward to reveal a screen full of sliders with which you can control each light's intensity.

Controlling the individual bulbs' brightness levels.

Lee Hutchinson

Tilting the phone to the side changes the sliders into a color selection screen, where you can move each light's drop-pin to tweak its shade. The left half of the screen is given over to standard lighting hues, with a color temperature range between 2000-6500K. The right half of the screen contains the whole spectrum of colors the lights can produce. Dragging one light's drop-pin onto another's temporarily groups the lights together so they display the same color and can be adjusted in lock-step.

You can create your own scenes, using photos you provide or pulling from Philips library; the Hue portal also lets you grab scenes created by others. You can make scenes based on the four built-in recipes as well. When setting up a scene, you're able to choose which lights the scene affects (which is how you can separately control different Hue bulbs in different rooms), the lights' intensity, and their colors.

Left: Creating a new scene: do you start with a photo of your own choosing, a picture from Philips, or a pre-built "recipe"? Right: The built-in "recipes" are supposedly tuned to enhance certain moods or mental states. They're neat, but they did not help me finish this review any faster.

Left: Step two is picking which lights your new scene will use. Limiting certain scenes to certain lights is the easiest way within the app to group the lights together, and this is how you use the app to control lights in different rooms separately. Right: The last step is using the picture you selected (in this case, I picked the full spectrum pic provided by Philips) to set your lights' colors.

You can also add a timer to each scene, which adds some neat wrinkles to how the lights can be used. You can set your custom scene to automatically activate at a certain time, either coming on immediately or fading in over a 3- or 9-minute period. A scene could easily be constructed to flip the house lights on before you arrive home from work, or to gently fade in and wake you up in the morning.

At least, that's the theory—the scheduling utility is crippled into worthlessness by not being able to set a separate schedule for weekdays versus weekends. It's all well and good to be able to have my bedroom slowly fill with warm light at 6:00 a.m. on a weekday, but I sure as hell don't want that happening on Saturday morning.

Philips, though, has gone the unusual route of not locking down the Hue's bridge. Though there is no official SDK available yet—Philips promises one is coming soon—the bridge which controls the system is actually quite receptive to hacking (the good kind of hacking, not the bad kind). This opens up a world of awesome possibilities we'll get into in just a moment.

These bulbs have always struck me as something strange since they were first reported about here on Ars. I'm willing to bet Phillips is taking a lot of input about their app tho and we will see more flexible usage happening in the future.

Sounds awesome, although I'm a bit wary of their apparent lack of commitment to the product (Apple store only, really?). I'll probably wait until a solid open source community effort builds up around on system or the other, as their app looks way too restricted for what I would want to use it for.

At the rate that LED lighting is advancing, this is definitely going on my "check again in a year" list. It seems like such a relatively straightforward technology that I can't imagine bulk manufacturers not to get this down to $cheap. Since I can get a 5 meter RGB LED tape for $40, which has way more actual LEDs on it, I'd guess it's the integration of the other technologies - mainly the driver, controller, and wireless bridge - that's the current pinch point. Get that all down to 1 or 2 IC's and you could pump these babies out for peanuts.

Sounds awesome, although I'm a bit wary of their apparent lack of commitment to the product (Apple store only, really?). I'll probably wait until a solid open source community effort builds up around on system or the other, as their app looks way too restricted for what I would want to use it for.

They appear to barely be able to maintain the supplies needed w/only the APple store as their customer, why would they try and branch out to be permanently out of stock in more places? Plus they figure people buying Apple have more money, therefore their higher priced lighting option is more likely to be considered seriously than if they would sell them at Wal Mart.

Sounds awesome, although I'm a bit wary of their apparent lack of commitment to the product (Apple store only, really?). I'll probably wait until a solid open source community effort builds up around on system or the other, as their app looks way too restricted for what I would want to use it for.

(Bold type is my doing). I was going to post something along the same lines but I'll just launch off Xavin's post. Why is this only being sold though the Apple store? Doesn't that only serve to add an extra layer of costs to the consumer? Or is it a given that Apple sells a premium prices and the only way Philips can profit is by taking advantage of this? Not sure. Either way, it seems they are hedging their bets and not committing as Xavin mentions.

Bit off topic: Great article! I'd love to have the opportunity to get about 30 of those guys, take a week off from work, and tinker with lighting setups all day. The price though is a deal breaker for us that might not have the disposable income to invest in fascinating new toys. Thanks for the LIFX link. I'll be looking into that today as well.

I don't think you can claim your programming skills are "essentially zero" if you know what cURL and cron are and how to use them, let alone know enough to build a web page to control your fancy LED light bulbs.

This is a really neat idea. I only wish we could control color schemes on our iOS devices as easily. Something akin to the way you can use Dark Adapted in Windows (and previously on Macs as well). I would love to be able to subtract some blue automatically in the evenings so the light isn't so harsh and doesn't interfere with night vision and circadian rhythm as much.

I've become a fan of LED lighting since moving flats a year ago and having to outfit all the rooms with decent lighting. This is very welcome news and being able to control lighting intensity and colors from a crontab is just insanely great.

Very much of a luxury, granted. But especially during the winter I need a lot of artificial light, this is not something you use just every now and then.

I'm really excited to see what some creative lighting designers can come up with using DMX512 control scheme in small stage scenarios. A Flying Pig Hog lighting console and these lights should make for an interesting pair up.

I've been using the SMD LED tape all year at work (live theatre) and since you can find 5 meter reels on Amazon for under $10 now, I'm going to put it all over my house. Both for accent lighting and emergency lighting. I can put a foot or so in ceiling fixtures and run a low-voltage system down to the basement so in the event of a power outage or disaster, I can hook up a car battery.. For the basement, I'll put it under the stair nosing for night-time safety, up in the ceiling joists for party lighting, outside for summer garden party lighting, etc etc.

As for DMX control, I've been buying the 3, 4 and 24-channel DMX dimmers from http://www.ecolightled.com and coupling them with modified ATX power supplies (modified to spit out huge and stable 12VDC). We use an ETC Ion in all our spaces and control is working quite well. The dimmers only go down to about 8% smoothly and then step pretty heavily to zero, but what do you expect for $20 a channel. Eco Light LED also sells shitty little control consoles as well, since the ETC Ion is $10,000. Nearly every show this season has had LED tape somewhere in it, and I just discovered the double-density stuff. Wow!

Is there any real difference between the Hue shown here and the LIFX bulb on Kickstarter here? They seem pretty similar to me. Obviously, there's no LIFX bulb to compare against, but spec-wise, it looks to me like Philips saw the idea on Kickstarter and pushed it through first.

Clearly you missed the entire section at the end where I mention the LIFX bulb and talk about the differences

I actually was able to back the project shortly before they sold out of bulbs, so I'm awaiting my LIFX along with everyone else. As soon as it comes in next year, I'll absolutely do a comparison between it and the Hue system.

This is a really neat idea. I only wish we could control color schemes on our iOS devices as easily. Something akin to the way you can use Dark Adapted in Windows (and previously on Macs as well). I would love to be able to subtract some blue automatically in the evenings so the light isn't so harsh and doesn't interfere with night vision and circadian rhythm as much.

Is there any real difference between the Hue shown here and the LIFX bulb on Kickstarter here? They seem pretty similar to me. Obviously, there's no LIFX bulb to compare against, but spec-wise, it looks to me like Philips saw the idea on Kickstarter and pushed it through first.

I doubt that Phillips saw the Kickstarter project and suddenly went into overdrive. They've likely been working on this for some time. Phillips is a leader in lighting tech, while the Kickstarter project is just that, a project, not yet a product.

They appear to barely be able to maintain the supplies needed w/only the APple store as their customer, why would they try and branch out to be permanently out of stock in more places?

Because they missed the target market for this, it's hacker/home automation geeks, not Apple people.

Oh yes, that absolutely massive market. If they're sold out at the Apple store there's no point in expanding to other stores until they can make more of them. Also, hacker/home automation geeks can go to the Apple store just as easily as everyone else.

Is there any real difference between the Hue shown here and the LIFX bulb on Kickstarter here? They seem pretty similar to me. Obviously, there's no LIFX bulb to compare against, but spec-wise, it looks to me like Philips saw the idea on Kickstarter and pushed it through first.

Clearly you missed the entire section at the end where I mention the LIFX bulb and talk about the differences

I actually was able to back the project shortly before they sold out of bulbs, so I'm awaiting my LIFX along with everyone else. As soon as it comes in next year, I'll absolutely do a comparison between it and the Hue system.

Don't buy the little wire clips, just solder wires on. The clips suck. The waterproof stuff is much more robust, but is a few bucks more. If you need any more tips, let me know. I've used 50 reels this year alone.

Don't buy the little wire clips, just solder wires on. The clips suck. The waterproof stuff is much more robust, but is a few bucks more. If you need any more tips, let me know. I've used 50 reels this year alone.

I'm more looking for ideas on the controller end. I've got a cheap and cheerful infrared controller running that cost $5 running off an ATX supply, but its abilities are limited to say the least. I'd love to be able to control it in a more refined and automated way, but I don't want to spend a small fortune on pro-grade lighting equipment to do so.

Is there any real difference between the Hue shown here and the LIFX bulb on Kickstarter here? They seem pretty similar to me. Obviously, there's no LIFX bulb to compare against, but spec-wise, it looks to me like Philips saw the idea on Kickstarter and pushed it through first.

Sounds awesome, although I'm a bit wary of their apparent lack of commitment to the product (Apple store only, really?). I'll probably wait until a solid open source community effort builds up around on system or the other, as their app looks way too restricted for what I would want to use it for.

(Bold type is my doing). I was going to post something along the same lines but I'll just launch off Xavin's post. Why is this only being sold though the Apple store? Doesn't that only serve to add an extra layer of costs to the consumer? Or is it a given that Apple sells a premium prices and the only way Philips can profit is by taking advantage of this? Not sure. Either way, it seems they are hedging their bets and not committing as Xavin mentions.

Bit off topic: Great article! I'd love to have the opportunity to get about 30 of those guys, take a week off from work, and tinker with lighting setups all day. The price though is a deal breaker for us that might not have the disposable income to invest in fascinating new toys. Thanks for the LIFX link. I'll be looking into that today as well.

Edit: Spelling

Considering their lack of availability even when selling only through Apple, I'd say they seriously underestimated market demand. I imagine someone in Phillips thought this might just be some wacky niche product for the well-healed (thus sell only in Apple stores), but it turns out their actual appeal is more universal. I'm betting as more people buy, prices will fall (possibly dramatically, especially with LIFX competition) and you'll probably find them in Home Depot or other places Phillips sells their normal lighting products eventually. I'm guessing not until next year sometime though. Definitely a "check on this a year from now" product (as someone said above) for me. I'm sure there'll be more options then, at better prices.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.